Health officials announced a new campaign Friday to promote New York City's condom giveaway program, which distributes tens of millions of condoms annually in an effort to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies.
"We have...

Girls who got vaccinated against HPV were more likely than their unvaccinated peers to become infected with a sexually transmitted disease, but the vaccine was definitely not to blame for their risky sexual behavior, according to a new study of more...

Adult film production migrated from California to Nevada after voters in Los Angeles County approved a law requiring condom use on set. Now, a condom use requirement could follow.
Nevada health officials said Friday that they're considering strict...

The latest government report on rates of reportable sexually transmitted diseases has good and bad news for the Peninsula and Hampton Roads.
In its summary of 2013 rates for chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in 50 metropolitan areas, the U.S. Centers...

In religiously conservative Pakistan, a television call-in advice show is tackling an issue rarely discussed in public: Sex.
Once a week, a doctor appearing on HTV's "Clinic Online" focuses on sexual issues, fielding questions about sexually transmitted disease, fertility and how to deal with husbands having multiple wives in this Muslim-majority country of 180 million people.
"It wasn't an easy decision," said Faizan Syed, the CEO of HTV, a private satellite channel. "The biggest question was how...

Dr. Peter Beilenson thought fighting the intractable rates of drug use and sexually transmitted diseases in Baltimore was tough. Then the former city health commissioner took on health insurance.
"It's the hardest job I've had," said Beilenson, founder and CEO of Evergreen Health Cooperative, a nonprofit insurer created under the federal Affordable Care Act to offer "patient-centered" care and bring cost-curbing competition to the market.
"We're first new commercial insurer in 20 years in Maryland...

The documentary “deepsouth” chronicles four people in the American South and how they are trying to find a solution to the region’s HIV epidemic. In the film, there is a scene where a health teacher in Mississippi uses candies in cups to demonstrate how sexually transmitted diseases are spread.
Throughout the lesson, the teacher does not say the word “condom” because by state law she is prohibited from doing so. In some states where sex education is provided, teachers are...

It would have seemed the stuff of fantasy in the dark days of the 1980s, when an AIDS diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence: a pill, taken daily, that could protect against HIV infection.
But today, such a drug exists. The blue tablet, marketed as Truvada, has been available to people at risk of being exposed to HIV since 2012.
The pill can be highly effective — reducing infection risk by as much as 92%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It could have a...

Jen Lancaster has built a career on reinventing herself. In “Such a Pretty Fat,” she tackled weight loss. In “My Fair Lazy,” she sought high culture. In “The Tao of Martha,” she lived a life informed by Martha Stewart.
In recent years, Lancaster has also reinvented herself as a novelist, most recently with the sibling rivalry of “Twisted Sisters” and time-traveling delirium of “Here I Go Again.”
Below is an excerpt of our wide-ranging...

In February of 1960, the American magazine Look ran a cover story that asked, "Should a Girl Be First in Space?" It was a sensational headline representing an audacious idea at the time. And as we all know, the proposal fell short. In 1961, NASA sent Alan Shepard above the stratosphere, followed by dozens of other spacemen over the next two decades. Only in 1983 did Sally Ride become America's first female astronaut to launch.
But why would anyone think a woman would be the first to space, anyway?...